Rep. Rush Holt: Public spending can mean investing in future

During a recent telephone town hall meeting, I spoke about the importance of public spending, even in tough times, on things that advance our country. The G.I. Bill was, I said, a wise investment in America’s future even though, when it was enacted in 1944, America’s debt was more than twice what it is today. A PolitiFact article judged my remark about the debt “False” (“No comparing federal debt with numbers from WWII,” Dec. 18). They are correct; I should have said “deficit” rather than “debt.” The Star-Ledger does a vital public service by correcting the record and holding elected officials to account.

Still, my basic point is both true and critically important. According to the Office of Management and Budget, America’s deficits were more than twice as large in the 1940s as they are today. In 1943, the deficit was 30 percent of our economy’s size; in 1944, it was 23 percent. Today, it is less than 9 percent. As for publicly held debt, it was significantly larger as a share of our economy in 1944 than it is today.

Americans could easily have said we could not afford the G.I. Bill and abandoned our future potential. Instead, Congress passed the G.I. Bill. In today’s figures, the federal government spent — rather, invested — $115 billion on these G.I.s.

To those who say that our deficits are too high to invest in research and development, education and infrastructure that would allow America to compete in this increasingly global economy, I will simply point out that, had we listened to that same pessimistic argument seven decades ago, Americans would not be nearly as prosperous as we are today.